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Nick Hedges (Photographer)
Original Side Gallery exhibition text, 1981:
Nick Hedges was commissioned by Side Gallery in 1979 to document the North East fishing industry. After looking at the various fishing ports along the north east coast he selected North Shields’ Fish Quay as the basis of his documentation; partly because of its accessibility and scale, but also because it encompassed a wide variety of fishing activities including trawlers, seine net boats and cobles.
The Fish Quay is an area of genuine ‘free enterprise’. As local writer Tom Hadaway says, It is the closest thing Britain can offer to the Gold Rush towns of the Wild West, and represents an area where one can genuinely still carve out a career.
The exhibition is set out logically to show the various stages of the industry through catching the fish, landing them at the quay and the fish auction, until finally it reaches the ‘wet fish’ shops. The wholesalers are shown filleting the fish and preparing them for distribution throughout Britain. Small shark (dog fish) are skinned, iced and sent to London where the fish and chip shops market them as rock salmon.
In all, Nick spent three months taking photographs and a further two months preparing the exhibition. It has been well received by the local population and offers a rare insight into an industry currently in the news.
Note: Nick Hedges’ photographs form the bulk of images in the Fishing Industry pack produced by Amberside and North Tyneside Metropolitan Borough Council in 1990. Copies are available from Amber. In 1981, Amber released The Filleting Machine, their first major drama production, written by Tom Hadaway, a writer for theatre and television, who had a fish shop in Whitley Bay.